When I used to drive Interstate 10 over San Gorgonio Pass to visit my parents in Palm Springs, I was always thrilled to see the 3,000 windmills on each side of the freeway.
Currently they produce 615 MW of power, and until I did the research for this column, I did not realize that most of these wind turbines came from Denmark, which now exports half the wind turbines in the world.
Denmark generates on average 20 percent of its electricity from wind, and on a really stormy day, the power produced exceeds the needs of this country of 5.5 million people. Dramatic improvement in efficiency and durability mean more energy and shut downs only in extreme conditions.
Today over 80 percent of Danish wind mills are owned by cooperatives or individual farmers. Substantial tax credits were required to get this industry off the ground, but this government support has paid off in spades.
World-wide the wind industry has been growing 30 percent per year for the last 10 years, constantly outpacing its own projections. The EU countries met their own goal of 40,000 MW five years early.
The American wind industry has been frustrated by lack of support from the Bush administration, which is slavishly committed to petroleum rather than alternative energy sources. The Republican Congress allowed the Production Tax Credit for renewable energy to expire at the end of 2003. The result was that only 389 MW of wind power was added in 2004, making it very difficult for wind and solar investors to proceed.
On April 10, 2008, by a vote of 88 to 8, the Senate passed an energy bill that includes a 2 cent per kilowatt tax credit for renewal energy production that will last 10 years. This bill now goes to the House where it should also pass.
A recent federal study estimated that by 2030 the U.S. wind industry should be producing 300,000 MW at 6-8.5 cents/kwh with no subsidies. By contrast the report calculated that new nuclear power plants would cost 15 cents/kwh.
This is still only 20 percent of projected energy needs, a level that Denmark achieved in 2007. This is embarrassing given the fact that we could have bought the technology from Denmark 30 years at ago at a much lower cost and eliminated billions of tons of greenhouse gases as a result.
The main criticism of wind and solar power is that they depend on the sun shining and the wind blowing. Danish engineers have met this objection in creative ways.
The people on the Danish island of Lolland are using their excess wind power to electrolyze water to produce hydrogen, a form of energy that can be stored. Wind and solar energy can also be stored in batteries and as compressed air to run electric power turbines.
Electricity can be transmitted over long distances much more efficiently as DC current. A DC grid is now in place in Scandinavia, Northern Germany, and the Netherlands, with plans to expand it across the North Sea to Scotland. The wind will always be blowing hard somewhere in this region.
A recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal (5-12-08) claimed that nuclear power should be favored over wind and solar because the federal subsidies per megawatt hour are $1.59, $23.37, and $24.34 respectively.
Suspicious of these figures, Charles Komanoff (Grist, 5-16-08) calculated that nuclear reactor subsidies totaled $154 billion from 1950-1990, or $3.75 billion per year. From 1983-2007 government support for wind and solar was $150 million per year with a serendipitous 25-year total of $3.75 billion.
I returned to Denmark in September, 2007, my first time in 21 years after my second sabbatical there. Coming upon the new 2 MW wind mills in the countryside is an awe-inspiring experience. The 3-blade rotors are 236 feet in diameter and they sit on towers 222 feet high.
Some people find windmills unsightly and don't want them in their backyards, but I join many others in praising them as a beautiful combination of form and function. The fact that it is nonpolluting, renewable energy also adds to the pleasure.
Solar and wind will not be the solution for many places in the world, but together these two green energy options will help the world face the challenge of global warming and offer alternatives to the oil being produced in too many unstable countries.
